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“Can we have another demonstration?” Matilda asks. “Something that would hold back the headless horseman?”
“Of course,” I say, but I don’t ask for a volunteer. I usually pick on Kat all the damn time so I decide to pick on Brom for a change.
Brom, who has shown zero magical ability.
But, if he’s related to Sisters Sophie and Margaret, there is potentially a lot of power lying in those bulky veins of his. After all, there must be some reason why he’s the one chosen to be with Kat. What does it say about me that I’m a little disappointed that I was never the chosen one that Kat was supposed to marry?
“Brom Bones,” I say to him with a flourish of my hand. “Care to step up here, help me demonstrate how to defend yourself against the headless horseman?”
Oh, if looks could kill, I would be a dead man.
But Brom gets to his feet, and I’m honestly surprised he’s doing this at all, considering, well, everything. It also gets me hot under the collar to know that even in this setting, he obeys me like the good boy that he is. It takes all my self-control to keep from praising him like that as he stands in front of me on the platform.
I’m still grinning at him like a fool, though.
“Brom,” I say to him, standing much closer to him than I was to Paul.
“Professor Crane,” he says slowly, his jaw flexing.
“Tell me,” I say, tapping my finger on my chin, “let’s pretend you’re the horseman for a moment. What kind of power would you have, what kind of magic would you use to try to hurt me?”
He stares. “I’d probably use my ax and chop your damn head off.”
Students burst out laughing. Even I find it funny, though a little unsettling at how much he seems to mean it. Perhaps I should tread more carefully with him and his moods.
“So,” I go on, “let’s pretend for a moment that the horseman is an evil spirit. What would be one way someone like me could disable such a spirit?”
And if the actual horseman could give Brom some real insight right now, that would be lovely.
“You would have to disable the source,” Brom says, surprising me, and I’m not sure if he just came up with that or if he knows something.
“The source?” I ask. “You mean—”
“Professor Crane?” one of the students says.
I squint at Brom, trying to figure him out, then look over at the student. They’re standing by the window along with a few others, staring outside.
“What is it?” I ask testily, wanting their full attention, wanting Brom to keep talking.
“There’s a woman standing on the roof of the cathedral,” Josephine says, staring at me with saucer-wide eyes.
“What?” I say, running off the platform and over to the window, putting my face close to the glass. Sure enough, on the top of the Gothic cathedral, in-between two of the spires, is a girl.
Not just any girl though. She’s as thin as a beanpole, with long dark hair and is dressed in a dirty white gown, torn at the seams.
She looks exactly like the girl I had seen dancing by the lake one night before the Sisters came and took her away.
“That’s Lotte,” someone else says. “She was in my history class the first week of school and then never came back.”
Suddenly Kat is beside me and I move over to make room for her, Brom coming behind me. “Oh my God,” Kat whispers. “She’s going to jump.”
“Are you sure?” I ask her, and sure enough the girl starts looking over the edge and dangling one foot off it.
“Jesus,” I swear and run out of the classroom and down the hall, bursting through the doors and outside. I hear all the students following me as we run into the light rain, yelling at the girl not to jump, and in seconds Brom is running beside me as we sprint across the wet lawn to the cathedral.
“Do we try and catch her?” he asks, legs pumping effortlessly with pure athleticism.
“We have to try something,” I say. “Lotte!” I yell up at the roof as we get closer, hoping that really is her name. “Stay where you are, don’t jump!”
But Lotte starts laughing. “Stay where I am?” she yells back. “And let them continue to eat me alive? We’re all just flies in a web.”
And then, before Brom and I can reach her, she throws her arms up in the air, as if she’s doing a ballerina spin, letting herself fall off the cathedral. I scream, running as if through a bad dream, watching as her body dances on the way down, before landing on the stone path with a sickening splat.
I stop dead in my tracks, unsure of what to do.
Flashbacks of Marie keep coming into my vision, mixing with the girl on the ground.
